subjectivity – Page 24

rothenberg emergence of nondeterminate residue after double negation

So we have P, the negation of P is written ~P (not-P)
The negation of ~P or not not-P will be written as ~~P

Now in classical logic ~~P=P

But in paralogic, ~~P = P and some nondeterminate remainder. This remainder will be written as *.

~~P = P*

The operation of the double negation is homologous to the operation of the empty set: it “spontaneously generates” an excess. In the action of the empty set upon the thing, it is as though the thing is doubly negated, once from the outside (the cut or hollowing that unglues the thing from being) and once from the inside (the minimal difference from itself) … we could say that an object is really an object*. … The object* — whether material object, linguistic object, or subject — is always more than one, but not quite two. 39

rothenberg extimate cause

The { } empty set persists after it is added to the thing to become the object, but there is a minimal difference that adheres to the object, otherwise without this “minimal self-difference” it would just be a being-object.

The minimal difference — the empty set — persists after the object is precipitated from the thing. It persists as the object’s minimal difference from itself … In effect, the object is generated from the conjunction of being and minimal difference or being and the addition of a negation. (35)

Ok, once the object “is precipitated from the thing” it contains this minimal difference, and this minimal difference can also be called the “addition of a negation” or as we’ve seen the empty set {}

Now in order to get our heads around extimate causality, we have to keep in mind these two important functions of the { } empty set: as a cut necessary “to bring an object into our world from sheer being” acts as the external cause and as the minimal difference “that makes an object non-self-coincident (and therefore not a sheer “being-thing”) adheres to the object as an internal cause. Taken together, (as they must be, because they are the same function), they form the extimate cause” (36)

I have to quote at length again here, because there’s just no way around this explanation that R provides: “The extimate cause functioning by way of the specific mechanism of the formal negation, engenders a structured field or system (with its concomitant objects, properties, and relationships) out of what would otherwise be a state of undifferentiation or monadic unrelatedness.” This is back to her dimly lit garage example. So the formal negation is responsible for engendering a system of objects out of sheer being.

“At the same time, it inevitably gives rise to an element of nondeterminacy, surplus, or excess. Speaking in terms of the social arena, we could put it this way: the operation that bestows identities, properties, and relationships also leaves a residue, so that every subject bears some excess. At every point in the social field, then, an irreducible excess attends social relations. In fact, although it seems paradoxical, this excess is what makes the social field itself possible and makes its structure potentially analyzable (36).

Is this what other poststructuralist thinkers allude to as the slippage of signified under signifier, that signifiers refer to other signifiers and not to some constant empirical object etc? Does R. mean by this “excess” simply the poststructuralist “surplus” of meaning, or of Laclau’s surplus that allows for the hegemonic struggles, of the surplus that Butler alludes to in her work? Interestingly in her most difficult chapters, R. addresses this issue head on, by locating in Butler and Laclau specifically, their notion of surplus and the ways in which they seek to tame it.

rothenberg empty set { }

Rothenberg, Molly Anne. The Excessive Subject. Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 2010.

Warning: I’m about to spoil the first 30 pages of Rothenberg’s book. They’re page turners so my apologies, but I would like to set up her discussion of ‘negation’ through her absolutely fantastic discussion of Badiou’s notion of the empty set { }

Here is one of many scintillating quotes I could draw upon from her book:

{ } The simple addition of a formal property, the empty set, which has no substance in and of itself, negates the state of sheer being that attends each thing-as-such. It does so by establishing a minimal point of orientation — like making a small cut in a sheet of paper. Once this cut is added, then “things” can bear some minimal relation to each other — they all have a relation to this minimal point of orientation. This “cut” of the empty set creates a vector, and with this stroke, things precipitate into a world of identities, properties and relationships — as objects (33).

🙂 Now that is an awesome way of putting it. What Rothenberg is getting at is this whole idea of a determinate negation: things become objects, only through a cut, a negation that allows them to be placed in a relationship to another. If this sounds abstract, Rothenberg comes down to earth a bit later when she concretizes this concept by explicating it in conjunction with the Nom-du-Père. This is a standard Lacanian move that locates the child’s entry into language, the ‘cut’ that vaults it into the ‘defiles of the signifier’. Rothenberg is setting up her argument which consists in a very complex but fascinating and unique interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory which will allow her to argue for a totally new and innovative way in which to view the ‘social’ or ‘social field’ as she prefers to call it.

rothenberg excess

Rothenberg, Molly Anne. The Excessive Subject. Cambridge UK, Malden MA USA: Polity Press, 2010. Print.

Individuals are always working to re-assemble, re-build the social. The social as in social force is not always already there, ready to take up the explanatory slack.

“As we shall see, the impossibility of immediate (immanent) communication will be decisive for the generation and sustenance of social subjects in a social field.

It is particularly important to keep in mind that signification — the process of bestowing meaning — does not function by way of the intentions of speakers or authors but rather by way of the appropriation of the signifier by the auditor or reader. 17

🙂 I like R’s emphasis on excess. It gives me a whole different understanding of this thing called the remainder the both Laclau and Butler throw around. R. here uses it to mean the surplus in signification, what is necessary for communication to exist.

The excess necessary for signification enables associations by dissolving previous associations: without such dissolution, the link between signifier and signified would ossify and signification would be impossible (19).

Excess signifies the impossibility of immanent communion and for R. this is a good thing indeed.

rothenberg extimate

Rothenberg, Molly Anne. The Excessive Subject. Cambridge UK, Malden MA USA: Polity Press, 2010. Print.

I’ve finished the book, but now I’m chasing down Rothenberg’s intriguing use of the core theoretical concept of her treatise: extimate causality. She introduces it by way of a critique of Foucaultian immanent causality, and also a rather somewhat hasty assertion of a Marxist external causality. Where the former’s immanence ruins its ability to clearly define any causal relations or ability to resist, the Marxists, according to R. rely on a version of causality that remains external to the field of effects, without the source or cause itself being vulnerable to change or the being effected in return.

So extimate causality is premised on an excess, that is the extra that is produced This excess is developed by R. firstly in her notion of retroversion. This is the way in which events, sentences, meaning in general is only created retroactively. That we create meaning only by looking back, or that in our very actions we are incapable of controlling what meaning these actions will have on outcomes or control those very outcomes. This is excessive.

rothenberg non-self-coincidence

I am going to quote at length Rothenberg’s critique of the position of Simon Critchley. Critchley argues that as subjects we are initially called upon by an other with a demand that we cannot meet, which is traumatic. This trauma is what turns one into an ethical subject.

… if the initial state of the subject is unethical because it is self-absorbed, grasping, and autonomous, what motivates this self-centered subject to experience the demand of the other as traumatic? In fact, what motivates the unethical subject to recognize or respond to the other at all? What will pierce the self-satisfied autonomy of this possessive selfhood so that it will feel the other’s presence as infinitely demanding? And what will guarantee that the experience of an infinite demand will call forth a sense of insufficiency, a traumatic sense of insufficiency, on the part of the subject? Or, put another way, why doesn’t the subject who encounters the other simply walk away, or try to annihilate the other, or help the other in some limited way and go home to an untroubled sleep?

That is, the Levinasian story as Critchley tells it seems to require that the subject already be ethical in order to respond in the way that would leadit to ethicality. In this account, the dividual subject is nothing other than an ethical subject from the start, a person who for some unexplainedreason, responds to the presence of others as requiring more of the subject than the subject can give. Nothing in the story accounts for the transformation of the unethical subject, because the change-agent (trauma) can only be generated if the subject is already responsive to the other. And once we start with an ethical subject, the whole circuitous route to ethicality through trauma is superfluous. 197-198

… Critchley never explains what would motivate the subject to attempt to relate to a radical other with whom there can be no relation. It just seems to him to be obvious that any subject would react to such an encounter with a sense of responsibility, so he never inquires into the means by which that responsiveness is achieved. Still something has to make the subject desire a relation with the other, rather than, for example, a rejection or obliteration …his model doesn’t explicate the production of the ethical subject … (200).

rothenberg molly anne

Molly Anne Rothenberg’s book Excessive Subjects is the book Žižek always wanted to write but can’t, either because he is unable to grasp what he continually was circling around, which Rothenberg saw and rectified in her book, or Žižek can’t bring himself to criticize Butler in the devastating manner with which Rothenberg accomplishes this task. The chapter on Butler is a devastating critique of what Rothenberg views as Butler’s totally mistaken, misunderstanding and gross misuse of psychoanalytic theory. Rothenberg’s pseudo-Lacanian approach in this book argues that what is key in subject formation is the notion of ‘excess’ or the ‘addition of negation’. Things start to really happen around page 30 when Rothenberg adeptly interprets Badiou using the analogy of a dimly lit garage. You have to read this part a couple of times it’s fascinating, but once the distinction between being and objects is understood, then you are only a hop, skip, jump away from understanding Rothenberg’s general thesis. I have just read the chapter on Butler, and I feel that although Rothenberg makes some good points, she nevertheless limits her treatment of Butler to one work, Excitable Speech (which is my least favourite work btw). In this work, Butler is still agonizingly trying to articulate a conception of agency that is, I feel, better laid out in The Psychic Life of Power. Rothenberg’s two critical points being centred on a criticism of Butler’s interpretation of Austin’s speech act theory and what is quickly becoming the achilles heel of Butler’s theory of agency, her interpretation of psychoanalytic theory. Rothenberg’s criticism of Butler’s take on Lacan is unrelenting. The rumblings began a few years ago regarding Butler’s uptake of the term “foreclosure” and it hits a crescendo pitch in Rothenberg’s chapter. However Butler could really take issue with Rothernberg’s curt dismissal of Butler regarding that latter’s take on Foucault. I believe Butler is a more complex Foucaultian, and as she argues in The Psychic Life of Power her understanding and use of Foucault is complex and attentive to the shortcomings of his theory of agency. I am eager to get into the chapter on Laclau.

Note: the binding job on this book by Polity Press is horrible. This book is falling apart after only 2 days of very polite and gentle handling. Buyer beware!

rothenberg on the symbolic

Rothenberg, Molly Anne. The Excessive Subject. Polity Press, 2010.

Only the encounter with significative excess produces the subject as a social subject, serving as the means for freeing the child from the closed world of dyadic meanings and ushering him into the world of circulating (not completely stable) meanings available for appropriation and re-signification.

The Symbolic is not a systematic set of proscriptions, rules, practices, or any other substantively specifiable content shared alike by everyone else in the social field: it is not a system of stable meanings, even though it may seem that way at times and even though one might fervently wish or imagine it to be so. Rather, the Symbolic is a psychic register, the register of significative excess and appropriability.

In this register, in the mind of the individual, resides a collocation of meanings that have significance for that person, meanings which are always to some extent fantasmatically shared with others. These meanings come from the world of bodily experience, parental behaviours and dicta, extended familial practices and beliefs, the school environment, and the larger social world. Of course, people sometimes overlap in their habitation of these worlds: siblings, schoolmates, neighbors, party members, fellow religionists, countrymen, and conlinguists may share signifiers and contexts. Yet the significance invested in even the most closely overlapping elements may be radically different from person to person — and from time to time for the same person. Even children raised in the same house have different experiences and attach different meanings to the same events, parental actions, family narratives, and emotional states taking place in their home environments (88).

butler new preface to paperback edition of subjects of desire (1987) August 1998

In a sense all my work remains within the oribit of a certain set of Hegelian questions:

What is the relation between desire and recognition and how is it that the constitution of the subject entails a radical and constitutive relation to alterity?

… I am as much concerned with the way in which Antigone is consistently misread by Hegel as with his provocative way of understanding her criminal act as an eruption of an alternate legality within the sphere of public law. Whether Antigone functions as a subject for Hegel remains a compelling question for me, and raises the question of the political limit of the subject, that is, both the limitations imposed upon subjecthood (who qualifies as one), and the limits of the subject as the point of departure for politics. Hegel remains important here for his subject does not stay in its place displaying a critical mobility that may well be useful for further appropriations of Hegel to come. The emergent subject of Hegel’s phenomenology is an ek-static one, a subject who constantly finds itself outside itself, and whose periodic expropriations do not lead to a return to a former self. Indeed, the self who comes outside of itself, for whom ek-statis is a condition of existence, is one for whom no return to self is possible, for whom there is no final recovery from self-loss. The notion of “difference” is similarly misunderstood, I would suggest, when it is understood as contained within or by the subject: the Hegelian subject’s encounter with difference is not resolved into identity. Rather, the moment of its “resolutions” is finally indistinguishable from the moment of its dispersion; the thinking of this cross-vectored temporality ushers in the Hegelian understanding of infinity and offers a notion of the subject that cannot remain bounded in the face of the world. Misrecognition does not arrive as a distinctively Lacanian corrective to the Hegelian subject, for it is precisely by misrecognition that the Hegelian subject repeatedly suffers its self-loss. Indeed, this is a self constitutively at risk of self-loss. This subject neither has nor suffers its desire, but is the very action of desire as it perpetually displaces the subject. Thus, it is neither precisely a new theory of the subject nor a definitive displacement of the subject that Hegel provides but rather a definition in displacement, for which there is no final restoration. August 1998

Laclau subject formation

if the subject were a mere subject position within the structure, the latter would be fully closed and there would be no contingency at all … [Radical contingency is possible only] if the structure is not fully reconciled with itself, if it is inhabited by an original lack, by a radical undecidability that needs to be constantly superseded by acts of decision. There acts are, precisely, what constitute the subject, who can only exist as a will transcending the structure. Because this will has no place of constitution external to the structure but is the result of the failure of the structure to constitute itself, it can be formed only through acts of identification. If I need to identify with something it is because I do not have a full identity in the first place. These acts of identification are thinkable only as a result of the lack within the structure and have the permanent trace of the latter. Contingency is shown in this way: as the inherent distance of the structure from itself.

Laclau, Emancipation(s) 1996: 92.

Taken from: Jason Glynos and David Howarth,
Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory.

Routledge, 2007 pp. 128-129.

rickert acts of enjoyment

Rickert, Thomas. Acts of Enjoyment.

However as Torfing explains in New Theories of Discourse, there is a difference between conceiving the social as a totality that always falls short of closure and conceiving it as something already fundamentally split or fissured that we try and fail to conceive as a totality (Torfing 52)(45).

This is the point at which Žižek parts company with Laclau and Mouffe. While he retains notions such as chains of signifiers and a discursive field open to rearticulations, he theorizes the discursive field in terms of a fundamental fissure, not simply as something nontotalizable.

From Žižek’s perspective, the social is better understood in terms of a fundamental antagonism that prevents any closure, rather than as a Derridean field of signifiers whose incompleteness stems from the signifier’s free play in the absence of any organizing, totalizing center. It is thus a question of whether substitution or antagonism is primary in the operations of discourse. (45)

feldner masochism liberation

In Žižek’s Lacanian terms, the emergence of pure subjectivity coincides with an ‘experience of radical self-degradation’ whereby I, the subject, am emptied ‘of all substantial content, of all symbolic support which could confer a modicum of dignity on me’. The reason why such a (humiliating and potentially perverse) position of self-degradation is to be assumed, Žižek argues, is that within a disciplinary relationship (between ‘master and servant’), self-beating is, in its deepest configuration, nothing but the staging of the other’s secret fantasy; as such, this staging allows for the suspension of the disciplinary efficacy of the relationship by bringing to light the obscene supplement which secretly cements it. Žižek’s central point is that the obscene supplement ultimately cements the position of the servant: what self-beating uncovers is ‘the servant’s masochistic libidinal attachment to his master’, so as ‘the true goal of this beating is to beat out that in me which attaches me to the master’ (Revolution at the Gates, 252)

Why is masochism the first necessary step towards liberation?

When a subject stages a masochistic scenario and says ‘I am a priori guilty, and therefore I want to be punished!’, it is the
law that, in effect, reveals its impotence and frustration, since its universalistic foundations are exposed as merely functional to the superego command (‘Enjoy!’).

If a subject does not need the law to punish him, for he can do it himself outside the remit of the law, the latter inevitably loses its coercive character and exhibits its fundamental lack of purpose, its being anchored in jouissance. The masochist, therefore, teases out and identifies with the libidinal (fundafundamentally irrational and self-destructive) kernel of the law itself. 119